1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tray and a packaging for medical containers and a process for packaging medical containers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Medical containers that are prefilled with a medicine are a promising way of delivering medicine to patients.
Indeed, such kind of primary packaging requires no or little manipulation of the medicine by the healthcare workers or by the patient before injection thereof.
It is thus particularly advantageous in terms of hygiene, potential contamination and ease of use of the container.
As opposed to the foregoing, non-prefilled containers imply a tedious manipulation from the healthcare workers or by the patient, since he has to take an empty syringe, fill it by himself with a medicine contained in a vial or a similar kind of reservoir and finally withdraw bubbles from the container, before being able to inject the medicine.
However, prefilling medical containers, such as cartridges and/or syringes and/or vials raises several technical problems in the pharmaceutical industry.
Of course, the empty container has to be kept sterile until its filling, and the filling step must be carried out in aseptic conditions.
Besides, for an industrial filling process, it is necessary to provide automated machines to pick up an empty container, fill it with the medicine and then close it.
To that end, in some cases the container has an external shape (e.g. a peripheral flange) appropriate to be manipulated by a robot. In particular, packagings comprising nested containers placed vertically in a tub (i.e. extending perpendicularly to the bottom of the tub) are already used in pharmaceutical plants.
Such a packaging is shown on FIG. 1.
This packaging comprises a tub 1 that contains a nest 9 that is substantially parallel to the bottom of the tub and that lays on a peripheral flange 19 of the tub.
The nest 9 receives and supports the containers 2 in a vertical position.
When the packaging is delivered to the pharmaceutical filling plant, the tub 1 is typically closed by a sealed sheet of porous material and contained in a sealed plastic bag (not shown here) that ensures that the empty containers 2 are not contaminated during transportation and storage.
Before filling, the tub 1 is opened in an aseptic environment, the nest 9 full of containers 2 is taken out from the tub 1 and the containers 2 are lifted up and taken into a centering plate (which is an apparatus used to re-align all the containers at the same time in order to properly insert the stoppers simultaneously into said containers), but still being partly in the nest 9 and held during the filling.
Additionally, such tub 1 is not appropriate once the containers have been capped (e.g. after having been filled). Indeed, the space required by capped containers is greater that the one when they are non-capped and therefore the initial tub cannot be used with capped containers.
Moreover when the containers are made of plastics, the centering plate may generate scratches and particles onto the containers.
Particles have to be avoided because they may contaminate the surroundings of the containers and provide a support for microbiological contamination.
Scratches may negatively alter the aspect of the containers. In addition to the aesthetical deficiency, the presence of scratches on the containers may induce false rejections during the final inspection process after the filling step, which may lead to high scrap rates and consequently increased manufacturing costs.
Besides, lifting and centering a single container from a plurality of nested containers is difficult since the centering plate may not have enough room to easily access a single container.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,589,511 provides a tray wherein medical containers are arranged in a horizontal position, i.e. parallel to the bottom of the tub.
Said tray comprises a plurality of elongated cavities, each one designed to receive a container.
One drawback of such a tray is that the bottom walls and sidewalls of the cavities of the tray are in contact along the whole length of the containers, resulting in scratches on said containers. Therefore, such a tray is not suitable for scratch-sensitive objects.
Besides, said tray can be used to store only uncapped containers but the cavities cannot receive capped containers that are more bulky.
In addition, said tray is designed for manual handling of the trays and the containers by an operator, and is not adapted to an automated process.
One goal of the invention is thus to provide a packaging for medical containers that allows a quick automatic loading and unloading of the containers.
Another goal of the invention is to design a packaging that maximizes the quantity of containers stored in the packaging (such as tub) without causing damage to the containers.
Another goal of the invention is to define a packaging that cooperates with a loading and unloading system that is not likely to deteriorate the containers, that can be used regardless of the external shape of the containers (whether capped or not), and that enables a high production speed.